February 15, 2016 Monday Morning, Brazil
A “Cold Eggs for Breakfast”, Talk 3: Focus in our Meditation
Thusly named as they came from discussions over breakfast at the Casa while the eggs got cold! Please keep in mind that these are not polished talks, just excerpts of shared Dialogue and replies to questions with the portion transcribed here from Barbara.
Barbara: One of Buddhism’s key beliefs is that everything in the mundane world – things, feelings, perceptions, thoughts, our very consciousness – arises from external conditions. When a condition ceases, its expressions cease. These expressions are sometimes called the five aggregates, or in Pali, skandhas.
For me, a large part of my practice is simply watching the coming and going of these expressions as I sit in meditation. Observing them doesn’t mean I’m ignoring them. It means I recognize them for what they are so I can deal with them in a manner that suits my situation. When we are sitting we may start to see the first blip of an arising thought – and know that “this is a thought” a planning thought or a judging thought, for example. It may be a helpful thought. Maybe we feel rain falling on us. “I should close the window. Thank you, thought.” But once I close the window I don’t follow the thought, worrying that if I hadn’t paid attention, things on my desk would have been damaged, or I’d be soaked, catch pneumonia and end up in the hospital.
So, when we apply the Buddha’s teachings to daily life [dharma practice], we find that we can see how thoughts, feelings and sensations arise from particular conditions. We develop the ability to say, “Wait a minute, I’m observing, but I’m not going to become ensnared in that.” It takes a while before we finally learn that just because a thought arises, we don’t have to believe it; we don’t have to be ensnared. And we don’t get caught in another thought as soon as we leave one behind.
Simultaneous with this mundane world mindfulness of every-day objects arising and passing away, observed with the every-day mind, there is a larger awareness. We can understand the experience of listening and awareness: of resting in spaciousness, where no “thing” occupies our experience of resting. We may recognize that this initial “need” to fill our consciousness comes from our ego’s habit to protect itself from something, rather than simply being in emptiness. It takes a lot of practice to reach the point where there’s no approaching or withdrawing from an object; we have just a clear sense of its existence. We just rest in spaciousness sand observe. There is no observer! Whether the object is pleasant or unpleasant is not important. We don’t have to be attached to it or afraid of it.
For example, a condition arises, let’s use a bad smell, perhaps from a skunk, and see how it affects us:
Contact– our nasal passages sense something
Consciousness –aware “smelling.”
Perception – we recognize the acrid odor
Feeling – it’s unpleasant
Thought – we don’t like it; an aversion to it arises
Consciousness – we’re aware of the tension the aversion is creating in us. We’re actually now experiencing a different predominant object, no longer the smell but the aversion.
With clear Awareness, there’s no sense of a personal self in there; there are no stories about how did the skunk get into the house or how am I going to get him out, there’s just scent, awareness of unpleasantness of the scent, awareness of aversion if it arises, and then possibly there’s judgment, “I’m a practitioner, I shouldn’t be feeling aversion! I should be more centered!” A judging mind – another experience – has now arisen out from these conditions. Awareness observes, not engages, these experiences.
So we begin with mindfulness and watch the small self or ego get caught over and over, watch the suffering that comes with being thusly caught. But one day we realize, perhaps after the experience, that there was a vast, open spaciousness that watched this show; there were no stories, no contraction. This all occurred with a wide-open, spacious mind.
For most of us, it takes a fair amount of time to reach this place in our practice. And even then, we’re not perfect. Many years ago I had a very powerful experience. I was sitting in deep meditation near a lake. My eyes were closed. A dog wandered over and sniffed at me. In my level of awareness I noticed the dog and recognized that he touched me with his nose a few times. There was no self, just spacious awareness there with lake, dogs, birds and clouds. Then he lifted up his leg and peed on me. I’ll admit that this pulled me from awareness pretty quickly.
As we grow into our practice, we find that the spacious presence it invites becomes an integral part of our life, helping us in all we do.
If you’d like to know more about these practices and how they can grow more deeply, into, alternately, either access concentration or Pure Awareness, there’s a lecture by Aaron in the DSC archive. It describes them in more detail, using both English and Sanskrit words. It’s at https://archives.deepspring.org/Aaron/Workshops/Berkeley/080713BerkeleyAM.php
There is also a whole year of talks from a class: Consciousness and its Objects” describing Access Concentration and Pure Awareness in much greater detail. Archives/ Aaron/ classes/ 2006 & 2007